Palm Beach County courthouse closed because of (poisonous) Tellurium in envelope

[originalpckelly]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tellurium

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/palmbeach/sfl-111whitepowder,0,644311.story?coll=sfla-news-palm

" WEST PALM BEACH -- The Palm Beach County Hazardous Materials Unit decontaminated five people who came in contact with Tellurium, a poisonous powder, found in the mailroom of the county courthouse on Thursday.

None of the people who touched the powder had an adverse reaction, according to West Palm Beach Fire Rescue spokesman Phil Kaplan.

Authorities received a call about suspicious powder inside two envelopes at about 11:45 a.m. The mailroom and two judges' chambers on the ninth floor, where the letters were taken, were immediately sealed. No one was permitted to enter the courthouse, though it was business as usual for anyone already inside the building, Kaplan said. A half-dozen rescue trucks lined Banyan Boulevard, which was blocked from traffic.

The five people who touched the envelopes were taken to a red, decontamination tent outside the courthouse where they stripped and were sprayed down before donning paper suits."

[originalpckelly]

1. MSNBC now showing it...

[Ian David]

2. Thanks again, Ann Coulter.

See:

Can we Prosecute Ann Coulter for this? SOmeone TOOK HER UP on that "joke" to put rat poisons in supreme court Justices treats

I'm pretty sure this counts as terrorism.

We need somebody to put rat poison in Justice Stevens' creme brulee,'' Coulter said in a Jan. 27 appearance at Philander Smith College in Little Rock, Ark., regarding Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens. She later explained she was joking about the justice, whose votes have upheld Roe v. Wade, the landmark decision legalizing abortion.

Anyone remember THAT sordid little episode? Well it turns out that SOMEONE thought she was onto something....

A discussion of recent threats to judges’ safety, at a bar association conference in suburban Dallas last week, became startlingly specific when Sandra Day O’Connor, the retired Supreme Court justice, recounted that each justice had received in the mail “a wonderful package of home-baked cookies” that contained “enough poison to kill the entire membership of the court.”

Justice O’Connor’s remarks were reported on Thursday in The Star-Telegram in Fort Worth.

Although the episode was not publicly disclosed when it occurred in April 2005, it had a public, although little-noticed, denouement last month when the sender of the poisoned cookies was sentenced in federal court here to 15 years in prison.

...recipients included the nine justices; the chiefs of staff of the Army, Navy, and Air Force; and the director and deputy director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The packages, containing either candy or baked goods, were laced with rat poison.

More:
http://www.progressiveu.org/032631-can-we-prosecute-ann-coulter-for-this-someone-took-her-up-on-that-joke-to-put-rat-poisons-in-supreme-court-justices-treat

[Ian David]

3. $14 per pound, and possibly dangerous at levels as low as 0.01 mg/m3

<snip>

Commercial-grade tellurium is usually marketed as minus 200-mesh powder but is also available as slabs, ingots, sticks, or lumps. The year-end price for tellurium in 2000 was US$ 14 per pound.

<snip>

Humans exposed to as little as 0.01 mg/m3 or less in air develop "tellurium breath", which has a garlic-like odor. The garlic odor that is associated with human intake of tellurium compounds is caused from the tellurium being metabolized by the body. When the body metabolizes tellurium in any oxidation state, the tellurium gets converted into dimethyl telluride. Dimethyl telluride is volatile and produces the garlic-like smell.

Tellurium and tellurium compounds should be considered to be toxic and need to be handled with care.

More:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tellurium

[eppur_se_muova]

4. Actually, tellurium toxicity is fairly low -- not readily absorbed.

http://www.intox.org/databank/documents/chemical/tellur/ukpid84.htm

A survey of ninety-eight workers exposed to 0.01-0.1 mg/m3 tellurium
for 22 months revealed similar effects. The most common findings were
a garlic odour of the breath (84 individuals), dryness of the mouth
(32), a metallic taste (27) and garlic odour of the sweat (20). Other
symptoms included somnolence (16), loss of appetite (9) and nausea
(3). No evidence of sweat suppression was found. Urinalysis revealed
increased tellurium concentrations (0.01 to greater than 0.06 mg/L) in
the exposed group compared to controls. Symptoms occurred even in
those with urine tellurium concentrations less than 0.01 mg/L, though
the frequency increased at higher tellurium concentrations with
somnolence and a garlic sweat odour occurring only in workers with a
urine tellurium concentration greater than 0.01 mg/L (Steinberg et al,
1942).

One has to be careful to note the form in which it is ingested: sodium tellurite, for example, is an oxidizing agent, and is toxic on that account. But elemental tellurium (if that's what it is, reporters are very bad about details like that) produces few toxic effects. It's worth noting that the "garlic breath" and sweats are often the worst symptoms reported, and that the nose is sensitive to dimethyl telluride in VERY low concentrations. See the link for cases of tellurium ingestion: no deaths due to occupational exposure, two deaths when Na2TeO3 was introduced by catheter (about 2 grams each). This doesn't seem like much of a threat.

[Ian David]

5. So, I guess I shouldn't put the stuff into my body using a catheter...

even if someone sends me a catheter in the mail.

[eppur_se_muova]

7. Just don't burn something containing Te -- it will make *volatile* TeO2 & TeO3.

Inhaling these materials is perhaps the major risk of exposure. (These are actually solids at room temp, but sublime easily.)

[Minnesota_Lib]

6. Isn't this the court that heard Limpball's prescription drug case a couple of years back?

Not that some RW nutcase would send powder in the mail to get revenge on so-called "liberal" judges.....<cough, cough>

[Ian David]

8. My first thoughts were the Ann Coulter voting fraud and Teri Schiavo cases. n/t